“We had definitely planned on choosing the best songs from various shows to put together what would be the best versions of our biggest songs I guess,” confirms singer/songwriter, Ben Bridwell. “The Ryman is such a legendary place to hear country music and acoustic music, the big brains at our management thought that we should do an electric show and an acoustic set, just to get a different vibe going. So, the way that it turned out, we listened back to the acoustic performance and it sounded far more dangerous.”
Band Of Horses had stepped onto the stage at the Ryman as opening act for Modest Mouse in 2007, but this was the first time that the Seattle rockers had run of the place. There is so much history at the venue that Bridwell and his bandmates made sure that they took in history and played the songs in the spirit of those who had gone before them.
“Whenever you get to play at the Ryman it is something special. It is a unique place. You stand on the stage and goodness gracious, the history of the place hits you. It is not even that though, the dressing rooms are all dedicated to a different artist. There is the Hank Williams room that will have a heap of posters up from his shows and a Johnny Cash room and everywhere you walk you wonder whose footsteps you are treading on.”
When it came to choosing the songs to put on the album, Bridwell says that there wasn’t too much dissention between the Band Of Horses members. The Funeral is worth the price of admission alone, but there is no shortage of great version with Factory and No One’s Gonna Love You being towards the top of the pile.
“It is as exciting as hell that we get to play acoustic now to promote the record. We are now working on putting together a strange set of acoustic numbers that we think that we’ll be able to pull off. This gives us a second chance to not only play those songs better, but also to include some of the songs that we didn’t get to play over those two nights at the Ryman that ended up on the record. We are hoping to dig deep into the catalogue and see what we find.”
Bridwell stumbled across a fans stripped back cover of their track, Plan One, and were so blown away that he decided to revisit the song himself, and cover the fan’s (Denai Moore) version of his own song. He then sent a copy of the tune to Moore along with a message thanking her for her interpretation of the original.
“I have been working with a lot of back catalogue Band Of Horses songs and I thought, ‘Why not take into account the nuances that she brought to the song and use that and try and do another version of Plan One?’ I’ll get some crazy Irish jig of The Funeral sent to me next. I always love it when someone cares about our music enough to make it their own. People put their heart and soul into that stuff, so I love that.
“I’m not going to go searching the internet for a whole heap of versions, but if something special pops up, why not? It is such a dream job, where we get to regurgitate our past glories, this is the job that keeps on giving.”
BY CHRIS HAVERCROFT
